our first real weekend in Seoul

On Friday, after school I was appointed as the special guest judge of the English Speech and Pop Song contest at the middle school I work at. Some of the acts were painful to watch (one girl ran off the stage after only one verse of her song because she heard one of her peers laughing during a pause in the music) while others were amusingly ironic (two totally still and stone faced schoolgirls singing "We Will Rock You") and some were just cute (the several prepubescent boys who got together to sing their hearts out to some sappy love song).

Afterward, my friendly and very gung-ho English department chair, Faith, insisted that all the members of the English department have dinner together at a nearby American-style buffet restaurant called Ashley. This is the second time I have been taken out to this place, at the chagrin of my colleagues, as they seem to prefer more Asian-style foods. But Faith wants us all to have an American experience here of course. Afterward she insisted that we all go out for a round of norabahng (Korean karaoke) but I could tell that my coworkers again, really didn't want to go (and who would want hang out with their boss on a Friday night and sing norabahng stone sober?) so I insisted that I needed to be home or Richy would get worried. This is a particularly good excuse since we don't have a phone. Relieved, my coworkers left and Faith disappointedly took me home. At this point I was feeling kind of tired, and although Richy and I did have further plans with friends that evening, I didn't think we would end up staying out for long. But I was definitely mistaken.

We met up with our friend Patrick from the SMOE orientation at 10pm, the first time we've seen him since we escaped the compound. He brought his girlfriend along, a Korean woman named Min Hwa. We wanted to meet up with our friends Tom and Lindsay, but it's hard to get a hold of them since they also don't have a phone yet. We had some tentative plans to meet at the Dongdaemun Stadium Station (built for the 1988 Seoul Olympics) at 10:30, so we bought a couple of beers at Family Mart and sat and chatted outside the station (drinking in public seems to be generally accepted in Korea, although I'm not entirely sure of the legality of it). We waited there until after 11:00, but no Tom and Lindsey, so we moved on (we found out later they had taken a cab all over the place looking for us, but to no avail).

Min Hwa helped us find a good spot to get some more drinks and something to eat. We ended up at this place that was full of college students, and had a wide expanse of private booths to sit at. Patrick and Min Hwa recommended that we get the dongdongju meal deal. We were feeling adventurous and the atmosphere was fun, so we agreed to try it. Our appetiser plate included seaweed, some sweet cracker biscuits, and hard boiled quail eggs. I had heard about the Korean affinity for quail eggs, but I had never tried them so this was a little intimidating. Richy and I peeled a couple and dipped them in salt. They were actually quite tasty, just like a normal hard boiled egg, but the yolk has a much richer and creamier texture. So I'm officially sold on the quail eggs. Next, we got a big pile of hot kimchi mixed with sliced pork, and surrounded by wedges of firm tofu. Very spicy, but also very delicious. Then we got the actual dongdongju. It comes in a earthenware crock with a matching dipping spoon and bowls. Someone spoons you out a big ladle of milky white liquid, and you drink it. It's a kind of fermented rice beverage, which tastes surprisingly like hard cider. It has the same effervescent quality. And although it doesn't taste very alcoholic, you start feeling it fast. Patrick was telling us that this is the same stuff old ladies drink when they climb to the tops of Korean mountains. Finally, we got a big eggy pancake filled with a combination of seafood, onion stems, and kimchi. This was totally delicious, kind of like a traditional Korean pizza, although the pieces of squid in it freaked me out a bit. I just had to avert my eyes and enjoy.

Patrick then got a call from the other Patrick, also an Evergreen grad (first Patrick, will from here on be called Golden Age Patrick and other Patrick will be called Space Age Patrick - don't ask me why, I didn't make it up) who wanted us to come to his area of the city (somewhere south of the Han River) to hang out for a while. The subway was closed at this point (it closes ridiculously early for a big city - like 11:30), so we decided to try to catch a cab. This turned out to be a monumentally difficult feat because all the cabs driving by were full, and their passed-out-drunk occupants were teasing us with their drooling faces pressed against the windows. We kept slowly walking up the road (for about an hour), when finally, just before we gave up a guy got out of his cab, and we were lucky enough to jump into it as he was stumbling out. I don't know exactly where we went to meet Space Age Patrick, but it took us what felt like an hour in the cab, and we definitely crossed the river to get there.

When we got there, Space Age Patrick was already drunk, and we wandered around for a minute introducing each other. Then I realized that I recognized Space Age Patrick because he dated my room mate Kate my first year at Evergreen. It served as an example to Min Hwa from Golden Age Patrick: "See I told you we went to a small college." Anyway, somehow we ended up at an empty bar called the Cowboy bar that had an animated nite-brite style wall decoration of the twin towers on the back wall. It was interesting when we realized that the fireworks behind it looked remarkably like the buildings were exploding.

We then moved on to another Family Mart, where we drank a few bottles of Soju and ate some dried squid with mayonnaise (surprisingly good, especially when you've been drinking). This is where we decided that it was a good idea to go to a norabahng. We found this norabahng place nearby and prepaid for our time, which I thought was only an hour. We figured they'd come tell us when our time was up. In norabahng, you get a private karaoke room with your friends, which really cuts the inhibitions. We sang until we were hoarse, no one ever came to kick us out. To our shock and disorientation, we emerged onto a sunlit street. I remembered someone saying that bars and norabahng in Seoul close at never-o-clock, but I didn't really take it seriously.

It was a long ride home on the subway, definitely more than an hour, and it was a struggle to stay awake enough to make our stops. But we did, got home at 7:30 am, and slept until 2:30pm, just in time for our sofa to be delivered. Surprisingly we still had enough energy to go out for dinner, watch dancing soju bottles in the streets, buy some bookshelves, and watch a movie at the Seoul International Film Festival. I think it's going to be a good year.

-Katie